Notes - a good and busy day

       Mid-afternoon. Craig and Alta left this morning; you are both happy they could stay an extra day. Yesterday about noon you arrived at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton to see the Coen brothers’ Hail Caesar with Mason’s favorite actor, George Clooney in the lead – a fun film for all present – the four of you had the theatre to yourself for the first showing. Lunch followed at Longhorn’s – Jen was your waitress. Then for a later supper you shared a large pizza from Papa John. Great conversations (one focus was on the Colorado trip in late August – you both are arriving on Friday rather than Sunday) along the way since they arrived on Sunday, and Graeter’s for dessert after Alta made her version of Alta’s excellent turkey soup. – Amorella

       1643 hours. We are home after a stop at Graeter’s first. Larry sent us a contract on the master bath, Saturday afternoon. This is our next focus of business, perhaps this evening.

       Nearing bedtime. You have been playing with Jadah for a bit as Carol is readying herself to read a book. Tomorrow Jill comes to clean and Friday Kim, Paul and the boys stop by for dinner and a night over then head for the Orlando area to meet an old Cleveland Clinic family who moved to Wisconsin the same time Kim and Paul moved to the Delaware area. You are excited for them to meet their friends once again.

       2209 hours. We hope they keep their friends as we have over the years. Their friends have two children, one about Owen’s age and one about Brennan’s.

       Post. - Amorella

Notes - before C and A

       Craig and Alta will be here shortly. You have the trash out early and Tim is mowing the yard after picking up a good size pile of sticks from Winter (Carol already had the pile started). You offered to pay him more per mowing this season but Tim declined. Originally he said he would do all this for free but you declined on that by saying that if you had someone else mowing you would still be paying for it. You came to an agreement you are both satisfied with. He and Amy King are very good neighbors and have been for some twenty-two years now. - Amorella

       1414 hours. We have been very fortunate to have each other nearby over the years. 

Notes - one thought to another /

       Early afternoon. You have been helping clean up the house for Craig and Alta’s visit tomorrow and Monday AM. After visiting Craig’s sister, Kim and her husband Jeff in upper Warren County between Dayton and Springfield; they stop here before moving up to Chicago as Eric and Mary Kay’s boys have Spring Break this next week. You are excited as usual two see your old friends. You just had a flash memory of Dave Short, Craig Brelsford, Bob Clawson and you playing football for old Westerville in the Fall of 1958. The Ohio Athletic Association would not allow you to play your senior football season, 1959, because you were staying at your Grandparents’ Orndorff after your parents had moved to Middleburg Heights in Cleveland. – Amorella

       1256 hours. I did not want to string those two memories together Amorella.

       You didn’t, I did. One memory followed the other because you missed playing football your senior year, Don Landis and friends were also on that Westerville team you had played on since you were a Freshman on Head Coach, Jim Scarfpin’s team in 1956. – Amorella

       1303 hours. That just brings up more good as well as sad memories. We freshmen had to wear those old leather helmets out of the early fifties and even forties. What a motley crew we were. The showers and dressing rooms under the old stadium were the same ones my dad dressed in when he and mom were in school (Westerville Class 1936). Flood of many more memories roll out and down the river.

       So it is with everyone, boy. Where do you think those memories, yours and everyone else go to boy since you’re all in the same river, so to speak? – Amorella

       1311 hours. I have no idea Amorella. I don’t believe I have ever thought the concept before – millions, billions of peoples’ memories floating down a seemingly endless genetic river. This is like a Greek or Roman myth – what about the forgotten memories (while I am on the concept)?

       In here some are best forgotten, don’t you think? – Amorella

       1316 hours. That sounds pretty unrealistic, Amorella. Those memories also make us who we are and who we become.

       The fruit is more important than the seeds, boy. – Amorella

       1319 hours. I think of one’s character as the fruit not her or his memories.

       I am talking about one and not the other am I not? This is an example of how humans mix things up intentionally or not. It is no wonder truths are seen through the glass darkly. If scholars want to study something with refreshed approach, that would be a way to do it. – Amorella

       1324 hours. They do, Amorella. I think of the many scholarly approaches to Holy Scriptures such as the Bible – to look back in an attempt to see the original intent . . . like we do with the Constitution.

       And what is your observation on these attempts? – Amorella

       1327 hours. More controversy, it’s endless really, all rather depressing.

       People, grouped and individual, pretending to be scholarly cats. – Amorella

       1329 hours. That’s one way to put it. That wrestles up the dogs of demagoguery and war (in my mind). Alas, it appears there is no cheerful way out of such mental processes.

       Later, young man. Post. - Amorella

Notes - friends

       Mid-afternoon, and you are having a Subway picnic, only this time it is at the far north lot at Pine Hill Lakes Park. The temperature is the mid-sixties with a gusty breeze now and then but you are on bottom of the east side of the hill, so protected. The grass is growing near the lot, the yellow flowers are out and the honeysuckle is almost fully leafed. Spring is here. – Amorella

       1515 hours. I have been cleaning the garage since late morning, and I’m still not done, but will be within another hour or so. Tim is going to mow this weekend. He wants to do our grass, etc. for another season and that is fine with us.

       Carol is reading the latest AARP magazine that arrived as you were leaving the house for the picnic. The wind just changed directions – now coming in from the north and much cooler. – Amorella

       You skipped supper for two regular Graeter’s cups of mint chocolate chip. You had a dollop of hot fudge on yours. You worked for another hour but still have part of the west side of the garage to clean up but it will be much easier to do, just sort eight or so baskets of odds and ends as well as a lower full length shelf of odds and ends. Tonight you watched ABC News, “NCIS.LA” and the first two episodes of “Doc Martin” since the CD’s arrived from Amazon today. Carol is upstairs reading and you are going up momentarily. - Amorella

       2218 hours. I don’t know why you want to include these trivial everyday events.

       One cannot neglect one’s own everyday life because the blog will not be more fully honest without it. – Amorella

       2231 hours. It means next to nothing, Amorella

       No, it means most everything to you because Carol is here sharing her life. You mean next to nothing to yourself, that is a separate issue. – Amorella

       2233 hours. Your words are sharp and surprising. I did not expect your quick response. You caught me. I cannot image life without Carol of course. We are friends.

       Friends is indeed the right word here, better than any other for two married people. Post. - Amorella

Notes - today / time for bed

      Mid-afternoon. You took your 2015 tax material in for work and stopped at Marx Bagels for a picnic lunch in the parking lot watching cars go by on Kenwood Road. For a lark you allowed “Ms. Garmin” to take you home on an alternate route (Schoolhouse Road to Fields-Ertel) from Blue Ash. Presently you are sitting center-wise in Rose Hill Cemetery while Carol walks. You continue your exercises in the morning, forty minutes plus, five days a calendar week (since the last full week of December). – Amorella

       1520 hours. I enjoy the cemetery – varied sized chiseled granite lined either east to west or north to south, grass and trees. I take keen interest in cemeteries, since I was three, that’s the earliest I can remember playing among the stones in one. Having lived in Mason for forty years I know some of the names, relatives of former students, but not like at Otterbein, Pioneer, Methodist and Central College in and around Westerville.

       Don’t erase, boy. You indulged in a thought on the Dead. No harm done. Here’s Carol. – Amorella

       You are tired and are thinking of taking a nap. Post. – Amorella

       1705 hours. I am tired, just want to shut my eyes for fifteen minutes or so. 

       You did not shut your eyes. You and Carol watched the DVR until after eight then she read upstairs and you watched another “X-File” this one about a crazed church leader and his followers and a multiple personality possibly connected with Maulder in a past life during the American Civil War. – Amorella

       2140 hours. I wonder from time to time about past lives ever since Mother gave me The Search for Bridey Murphy to read after she read it when I was sixteen. The Merlyn stories don’t talk about the past ‘lives’ of souls that I remember. The only hint is in the science in the genes at least that’s what I remember from Grandma’s Stories in the books. I remember a life event or two about it but it is already written in here somewhere, maybe four years ago. No need to go over what I’ve already written, probably more than once. I ought to just go up to bed, at least listen to some music on Pandora before sleep.

       Why not. Post. - Amorella

Notes - making sense / a better question /

       “Et tu, Brute” comes to mind, boy, as you wonder on the world, and how you observe it. – Amorella

       1035 hours. My mind thinks back through the world of history and literature I have learned. I have experienced a lifetime saturated in both. Words are first, pictures second.

       Late afternoon. You returned from Graeter’s both satisfied after a cold kid treat in a cup. Earlier you watched the latest “Blind Spot”. You have also doubled your number of words in Dead Eleven – basically beat fifties poetry in soul-like conversation. You are not pleased with the segment so far. – Amorella

       1718 hours. I get the gist with the loosely dropped poetic medium but what sense for Merlyn? I assume he can listen in.

       Merlyn can though it seems as a musical piece. The melody is not so much haunting as basic and simply raw in note. – Amorella

       1723 hours. A railroad metaphor will do here – something along the line of an empty rail car being pulled to Dachau in someone’s enlightened memory. In seems odd in this clicked-clack of a ‘flash’ but fortunately there is not a soul on board as it was on board such a car at the Holocaust Museum. No souls on board and I don’t believe when I stepped on alone my soul stepped on with me. It hung on the corners outside keeping the created memory intact during real life some time distant.

       You’ve captured an unspeakable honest thought here and I’ll find a way to use it. Souls don’t mind punctuation even without the word ‘transmigration’. – Amorella

       1735 hours. I assume I am to make sense of this?

       It’s from your head boy, it’s your sense not mine. Post. - Amorella

       1755 hours. Surely the soul’s shell is grammatical in construction.

       Let’s assume, in here, that it is. We go from there. – Amorella

       1757 hours. Vertical and horizontal lines come next – from fingered digits, so to speak. No more. No twigs, no runes.

       The body is the mind’s maker. Go no further. – Amorella

       1803 hours. The brainanbody are nature made.

       Not for souls boy. The soul, in here, is a parasite. – Amorella

       1805 hours. That is not a kind thought Amorella.

       The soul knows what it is boy. – Amorella

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parasite - noun

an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.

ORIGIN

mid 16th cent.: via Latin from Greek parasitos ‘(person) eating at another's table,’ from para- ‘alongside’ + sitos ‘food.’

Selected and edited from the Oxford/American software

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       1811 hours. What nutrients does the soul derive?

       The humanity, boy, what else? Where is your brain? – Amorella

       1815 hours. That seems too obvious. What does humanity do for the soul?

       Now, that’s a better question. Post.- Amorella

Notes - former student / errands /

       You received a note from one of your former students at Escola Graduada, Vicki Jackson after you helped another former student contact her. She went on a private trip with another of your students Sylvia D. and you and Carol to Brasilia. Sylvia D’s father was senator of Estato de Sao Paulo and she and Vicki were staying at his capitol residence. It was a fun trip during summer (December) vacation. Senator D gave the four of you a private tour of the three main government buildings and accesses below ground that were off limits to the public, let alone foreigners. – Amorella

       1650 hours. Errands are done for the day. We actually accomplished quite a bit.

       Carol was out cleaning up her flowerbeds while you completed the last errand. Someone from the nearby nursery is coming out to help with the new landscaping design, probably tomorrow. – Post. - Amorella